ABSTRACT
The 1950s produced the beginnings of a revolution in married women's participation in the labour market. In 1931 only 16 per cent of married women were in the labour force, but by 1951 the proportion had risen dramatically to 40 per cent, and by 1961 to 52 per cent.1 Married women's employment had been underestimated in official figures for previous periods because of its seasonal, casual, part-time or home-based nature, but before the war. as Miriam Glucksmann argues, "married women worked in a hostile climate", and were often blamed for taking jobs away from single women.2 After the war this climate changed and many major trends that were consolidated in the 1960s and 1970s became apparent. The marriage bar, suspended during the war, was generally dismantled after 1945. This meant that the birth of a first child rather than marriage was increasingly the moment when women broke their attachment to the labour market. However, as the 1961 census showed, this break was not decisive, because of the emergence of a bi-modal pattern of participation, first discernible in 1951, where women returned to the labour market when their children were older, often to part-time work.3 The expansion of part-time work for married women and the consolidation of the distinction between part-time and full-time work were other notable developments in the period. There was also a reduction in regional differences in married women's participation rates.4
